The biggest differences are the embroidery area and card slots. The 9500 is almost twice the embroidery area of the 9000. If you want to transfer your own designs the 9500 is much easier because it uses standard ATA flash memory, where the 9000 uses proprietary cards.

what is the extension on the file? most embroidery designs are in zip format when you download them. the file format you need is either sew or jef, i'm not sure because i haven't worked with a janome machine for awhile. you need to unzip the file before you use it. here are a few embroidery groups i belong to. the people on them are great and you will get so much information from them.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClassicEmbroideries/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EmbracingMachineEmbroidery/
http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/AmericanEmbroideryConference/?yguid=102878935

here is my favorite site for embroidery designs. they give away 49 free designs a day and are running a sale on their site right now.
http://www.designsbysick.com/amember/go.php?r=5647&i=l0">Designs by SiCK Embroidery Library

feel free to e-mail me if you need a futher explaination of how to un-zip files or if you have any other questions.

have fun.

No, and you do not want to go in this direction.

You can use design cards, but they are expensive.

You should have a cable that connects the embroidery machine to the PC. This will show up on the PC as a new drive letter.

Create a file on the hard drive and name it Embroidery.

Download from the Internet to the Embroidery file.

When you want to send a design from the Embroidery file to the machine, select and send the desing to the drive letter for the cable.

For more help go to Forums at http://www.annthegran.com or, http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/us/us/en/model_top/HomeSewingMachine/hf_pe700_2_750dusbeus.html?reg=us&c=us&lang=en&prod=hf_pe700_2_750dusbeus